1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a method and apparatus for message management in a portable communication system, and in particular, to a method and apparatus for altering a stored message into a single unified message and controlling a capacity of a message box in a portable communication system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a portable communication system, a necessity to modern people, is being used without distinction among people of all ages. Service providers and system manufacturers are competitively developing products (and services) for differentiation from other enterprises.
For example, portable communication systems are evolving into multimedia equipments for a phone book, a game, a short message, an electronic mail (e-mail) message, a morning wake-up call, an MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 (MP3), a digital camera, and a wireless Internet service, and provides a variety of services.
Among functions of the portable communication system, a short message function is of much use because of the merit of a relative inexpensiveness compared to voice telephony.
The short message has evolved from a simple character message service into a Multimedia Message System (MMS) that additionally provides a service for a video, a photograph, a music file, etc. The MMS is a typical wired and wireless integration service that is a combination of the merits of a short message service and the merits of an e-mail service. The MMS is frequently used globally by users of the portable communication system.
However, the portable communication system has a limitated capacity to store such a kind of short message. For example, assuming that a hundred short messages have been already stored in a portable communication system that is set to store a maximum of one hundred messages, there is a drawback of automatically deleting a previously stored message to store a short message received in the future, or not being capable of receiving a new message, because of the hundred of previously stored messages.
Accordingly, a demand for a method and apparatus for controlling a capacity for storing the message is made to provide a convenience to people using the portable communication system.